Local Urban Farming with Shipping Containers

Local Urban Farming with Shipping Containers

Kimbal Musk, sustainable food enthusiast and restaurateur (The Kitchen and Next Door) and fellow entrepreneur Tobias Peggs, recently launched Square Roots an urban farming incubator program in Brooklyn, New York.

According to Business Insider, “The setup consists of 10 steel shipping container farms where young entrepreneurs work to develop vertical farming startups. Unlike traditional outdoor farms, vertical farms grow soil-free crops indoors and under LED lights.”

Why Vertical Farming?

Vertical Farming is the practice of producing food in vertical stacked layers. It’s a new innovation for urban cities that lack large areas to farm. It’s said that vertical farming will be a viable substitute for creating additional farmland and help create a cleaner environment as the population grows in the future, although those claims have come into question as of late.

Musk and Peggs, like many other proponents of urban farming , say that vertical farming has a number of advantages over traditional farming. Vertical farms expend 80% less water than outdoor farms and require much less space, they say. Because they’re indoors, Square Roots’ farms can grow crops in New York City rather than upstate, so produce is fresher when it reaches grocery stores or farmer’s markets. On top of that, each container can produce about 50,000 mini heads of lettuce per year.

Staying Committed

Square Roots is committed to the cause of sustainable urban farming. “Today’s consumer wants to know they are supporting companies that are doing something good for the world,” Peggs says. “This not just a Brooklyn foodie trend.”

Convinced urban farming is more than just a “Brooklyn foodie trend”? Click below to contact one of our Saf-T-Box experts and start your own Urban Farm made from shipping containers!